Is often desirable to mount removable devices at the muzzle of a firearm. A sound suppressor or silencer reduces the sound of the discharge of a firearm; a muzzle brake or compensator reduces recoil forces; a blank firing adapter is useful for training and for launching of grenades and rescue devices.
A conventional muzzle mounted accessory may be internally threaded to engage a threaded and of a firearm barrel. This has the disadvantage of being slow to mount and dismount, a serious concern in military and law enforcement contexts. Other prior art mounts provide quicker disconnection, but suffer other disadvantages such as inadequate repeatable precision of alignment (which generates shooting inaccuracy), complexity and cost of manufacture, and durability. Other prior art systems require modification of the firearm, and proprietary adapter components.
A number of patents have been granted for mounting muzzle devices, such as sound suppressors, to firearms. Various approaches also exist in the practiced prior art. However, there are a number of problems with prior art patents and existing practiced prior art. These problems include unwanted modifications to the barrel, the undesirable requirement of a proprietary flash hider, and the associated costs and time due to the installation of a proprietary flash hider. One of the major problems is that existing systems require modifications to the host firearm. These modifications either mean the machining of the existing barrel to accommodate the mounting system, or the installation of proprietary flash hiders that allow for the attachment of muzzle devices such as sound suppressors.
To minimize these problems, there have been a number of different approaches that have been used in past years. One approach has been to specially design the host firearm to allow for attachment of a sound suppressor. This adds an unwanted burden at the stage of designing the firearm, and requires that the firearm manufacturer be cognizant of a possible requirement to attach a sound suppressor to the firearm as part of the design criteria.
Another approach has been to design the mounting system to allow mounting to the existing flash hider on the standard rifle, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,773,746 (Vaden) is an example of this approach. This patent discloses a mounting system that allows for the quick attachment and detachment of a sound suppressor to the M4/M16A2 series of rifles that are equipped with a standard flash hider or compensator. The Vaden patent features the use of 3 pivoting fingers that are moved into position and locked onto the rear of the flash hider via the use of a rotating collar. A combination of left and right hand threads in the rotating collar and body of the mount meant that the collar was simply and quickly rotated one way to lock and the other way to unlock the sound suppressor from the flash hider.
G.B. Patent 2,242,476 (Felton) discloses a mounting system that allows a sound suppressor or muzzle device to be fitted to a wider variety of military rifles, which may be fitted with different length flash hiders that are conventionally threaded for attachment to a threaded muzzle. However, the design utilized a U-shaped cutout in a locking collar to accommodate the various flash hiders, and this collar was then secured to the rear of the flash hider by tightening up the suppressor (and subsequently the collar to the sound suppressor) against the front end of the flash hider. Screwing down the suppressor generates compression of the flash hider.
Another approach used by Knight Armament Company and Brugger & Thonet, AG, is the use of a U-shaped locking gate that fits onto a proprietary flash hider and which is held under spring tension to the flash hider via an enlarged BFA (Blank Firing Adapter) groove that is machined into the exterior of the flash hider near the rear end of the flash hider. To ensure that the suppressor did not detach due to spring failure, a secondary retention system was added to the mount to ensure that the suppressor stayed attached to the host rifle if spring failure occurred.
The approach of installing a proprietary attachment is also typified by U.S. Pat. No. 6,948,415 (Matthews et al) where the sound suppressor is attached and secured to a one-piece adapter and compensator that extended back over the barrel. The suppressor attached to an annular ridge on the adapter through the use of a rotating ring having an opening that is concentric when open and eccentric when closed, thus locking the sound suppressor to the adapter and compensator. This method of attachment is also in the existing practiced prior art as used by Brugger & Thomet (B&T) of Switzerland with the mounting system used with the Rotex-II 5.56 mm sound suppressor. Rather than being attached to an annular ridge on an adapter and compensator as per the Matthews patent, the mounting system of the Rotex-II was secured to a standard M4/M16A2 compensator and secured the sound suppressor against the rear of the standard M4/M16A2 compensator.
All of the above systems have significant disadvantages in terms of cost, reliability, durability, accuracy, and/or combinations of these.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a mounting system that provides a quick, secure and mechanically strong mounting system for muzzle devices such as sound suppressors, muzzle brakes, recoil compensators and BFAs (Blank Firing Adapters) to a firearm, that secures the muzzle device to the firearm regardless of vibrations from firing of the rifle, and allows for the quick and easy removal of the muzzle device from the firearm.
The present invention overcomes the limitations of the prior art by providing a system for connecting an accessory to a firearm having an enlarged muzzle portion has a body with a bore sized to closely receive the enlarged portion. The body has a stop to limit the insertion depth of the muzzle. A gate is received by the body for movement along the path perpendicular to the bore axis. The gate has a recessed area sized to receive the enlarged muzzle portion. A spring generates axial force to retain the muzzle portion within the recessed area. Compression of the spring enables movement of the gate to shift between an open and closed position, so that the accessory may be removed or installed when in the open position, and secured when in the closed position.